So for those who don't know, part of my research is geographic in nature. Specifically, I'll be using mapping technologies (such as Geographic Information Systems, or GIS) to look at how the landscape has changed within the settlement over the last
50 or so years (although these MST settlers have only lived on the land for 13, I'll be using aerial photographs and other remotely sensed data, such as from satellites, to understand the state of the landscape prior to when they arrived). As I'm anticipating, combining these various mapping technologies will help me assess whether forest cover has actually increased or decreased within this landscape as a function of the land management practices of these settlers (i.e. see former posts about tree planting). My basic hypothesis is that as opposed to conventional scientific and anecdotal wisdom, deforestation is not a unilinear process that is associated with migrant settlement, rather, it is much more complex, and is often tied to other land management practices, such as reforestation. Anyways, that's the slightly longer end of it...
So the "breakthrough" is that for my research I really need a pretty decent quality map of the settlement, so that I can digitize it, and overlay other data that I will collect later back in the states, such as aerial photographs, satellite images etc. Anyways, before coming down to Brazil I had no idea how big the settlement was, and was under the delusion that I could map it. Well, at 15 km on its side, and with between 6000 and 8000 residents, mapping this very rural area (complete with lots of barbed wire and not-so-friendly cows!) would be practically impossible. So I realized that I needed a map that was already prepared. Dan (see previous posts) informed me that the settlement's leadership almost certainly had to have a map for governmental purposes, so...I finally got up the kutzpa and asked the settlement leader (who talks with a very strong accent that makes him sound like Marlon Brando (sp?) in the Godfather, which to me is just perfect!) Anyways, he was more than happy to oblige and so showed me the maps that the government had prepared at the time of settlement. Without a photocopier I took approximately 100 different photos of the maps, to ensure that I got all the best combinations of the data, and now have what I need to begin the lengthy process of creating a digital base map of the settlement. This will be a fairly long, and time intensive process. First, I need to collect 4 GPS points that I can use to "georeference" the images (i.e. the locations of things like bridges that I can find on the map and also find in person). By taking these 4 GPS points I can basically take the photo and then underlay that on a map of brazil, and all of the features, i.e. rivers, houses etc, will be in the exactly correct location (assuming the original map was done well). That's the quick and easy part. The much longer part is creating by hand the 1200 or so "feature classes" or polygons, or basically shapes around each individuals home, the roads etc. If only there were a macro (or automated way of doing this...thoughts my GIS/programming audience?). The whole purpose of digitizing all these features of the original map image, is that once i have them digitized and integrated into a database I can overlay other data, such as forest cover in 1950, 60, 70,80,90,2000,2010, and then "query" certain locations, i.e. to look at someone's property (which might be covered with over 300 fruit trees that they've planted) and to be able to say that looking at specific landscape units, i.e. an individual's backyard, which I can now find easily because it is part of the new database, one can see that "X" occurs, or does not occur....anyways that's the long of it...
So below is a blurry image of a small section of the map.....
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